


Corpses and Coffins and Zombies and Things Like That

by beedekka



Category: Rhinestone (1984)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Ghosts, Mentions corpses and funeral homes, Post-Canon, Romance, Time Loop, Vampires, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 06:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8879944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/pseuds/beedekka
Summary: What happens after Jake and Nick win the bet?Title is a quote from the film :)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



“Shh, shh!” Nick whispered loudly. “Don’t wanna wake anyone up. It’s—” He brought his wrist up to his face and frowned hard at the hands of his watch, trying to bring his eyes into focus. “It’s... really late o’ clock.”

“It’s 3am, Nick, and if you can’t see two lines at a right angle, three inches in front of your nose, then you are even more drunk than I thought,” Jake grumbled. “It’s bad enough that we have to stay at your place tonight at all, but apparently I also foolishly considered myself long past the time in my life where I’d be at risk of havin’ to explain to a boy’s parents how we came to be sneaking in through the bedroom window in the middle of the night, because the boy was busy knocking over every piece of china in the house and falling on his face in the broom closet lookin’ for the bathroom.”

“You ain’t gonna have to do that. Nick Martinelli is perfectly compos mentis,” he reassured her. “He just drank a little more champagne than is strictly advisable in one sitting. Hey, it would have been rude not to – we were celebrating!”

Jake grinned. “I think maybe we shoulda drank a whole _lot_ more, since we got to charge the tab straight to Mister Freddie Ugo, sore loser, Esquire.”

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t want to be his accountant when he finally figures out how much it’s gonna end up costing for all the taxi repairs, that enormous bar tab, and a brand new cab,” Nick crowed.

“Well, aren’t you just the poet? Now will you hurry up and get the ladder down so I don’t have to stand out here in the freezing cold all night? If we’re sneaking in, let’s do it.”

Nick pulled on the bottom rung of the ladder that led to the fire escape, and they both winced when the metal made an unearthly grinding sound before sticking exactly where it was, six feet off the ground. “What the hell?” he exclaimed, giving it another tug, only to instantly halt again as it screeched and clanged.

“And that’s just great,” Jake observed. “First I can’t get into my building because _someone_ left the bag with my keys in it in the dressing room, and now I can’t get into yours without literally being ‘Leapin’ Jake’ from Leipers Fork. Is it busted?”

Nick attempted to pull it once more, this time wiggling the frame from side to side in case it might suddenly come loose. “Damn thing’s stuck fast. I think it’s stuck enough to hold steady, though: I’ll give you a boost if you c’mere.”

“You’ll give me a concussion! Uh, how about we just use the front door of this place for its intended purpose for once?”

Nick’s immediate urge was to shake his head and try the ladder again, but Jake was right - on a list of possible solutions, that one was the obvious frontrunner. He stepped back from the ladder and turned to contemplate the darkened entrance bearing the name, ‘Martinelli’s Funeral Home’ for a moment. He carried the keys for it, even though he seldom used them – truth be told, it gave him the creeps to walk through there. However, after a few more glances between the door, the broken ladder, and Jake’s increasingly disapproving expression, he made up his mind. “Yeah, okay. Just don’t look too closely at who else might be in there as we go by, ‘cause chances are they ain’t gonna be quite as lively as us, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s a chapel of rest, Nick – I think I can work out what might be lyin’ around.”

The thought of having to tiptoe in through the funeral home had abruptly chased the champagne buzz from his veins, and Nick took a deep breath before unlocking the heavy door and holding it back for Jake to cross the threshold.

“I don’t know if you’re being a gentleman or a scaredy-cat, letting me go first,” she commented, voice low.

“Let’s just not hang around. The door at the far end of the corridor goes to the chapel – all we have to do is go down the aisle and take a right, and the stairs there go up to where the organ is and my room. You remember?”

“I remember,” Jake murmured, and Nick watched the shiny white of her satin pants fade into the shadows as she walked forward into the darkness. There was a beat before she added, “and I can _feel_ you lookin’ at the rearview, cowboy, so you better muster up an ounce of shame right now.”

“I wasn’t lookin’ like that!” he hissed back, but she was already too far in for his whisper to carry, so Nick hastily re-fastened the door and hurried to catch up. “Jake?” he tried again at the end of the corridor. “I was just looking to see that you were finding your way all right.” She must have already gone into the chapel, because the hallway was empty save for a pale pedestal of lilies up against the wall.

Nick shivered and quickly stepped through into the sanctuary, carefully ignoring the door that led to the preparation room; he was curious about many things in the world, but mortuary science had never factored amongst them (much to his father’s chagrin). As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he was somewhat perturbed that Jake didn’t seem to be in the chapel of rest either. Was she sprinting through the building?

“Jake?” He walked slowly down the aisle that led to the low platform on which the caskets would be positioned, in far less of a hurry now he was moving straight towards an open one. God help him, if she was fixin’ to jump out from behind it…

A solitary electric candle flickered in an alcove at the rear of the platform, and as he got close enough to see its feeble glow illuminating the space back there, he could see that Jake wasn’t poised to give him the scare of his life. Thankfully, the casket itself was unoccupied too.

There was a pause in his breathing as his mind involuntarily ran through several scenarios that illustrated why he might _not_ want to be thankful that a coffin seemed to be missing its corpse, but he brushed them aside. Despite joking about the place being full of zombies and spooky supernatural shit, he didn’t actually believe that the funeral home’s temporary residents could reanimate or engage in any other schlocky horror hi-jinks. That would be ridiculous.

Wouldn’t it?

 _Wouldn’t it?_

 

Definitely. And Nick had precisely no reason to be hanging around down here in this room full of no corpses, undead creatures or ghosts anyway, especially when the ambient temperature had just dropped even lower than it had already been. Jake was probably up in his bedroom right now, warm under the covers and waiting for New York’s major new country and western singing sensation to join her, and who was he to keep her hanging?

“Nick...” Her soft voice was even calling him!

“I’m coming, Jake,” he whispered back, not wanting to be too loud in case the noise carried up and disturbed his folks.

“Yes, come find me,” the soft voice responded. “We’re waiting for you.”

 _We’re_ waiting? What? Who else was up there? Nick’s mind’s eye was running an involuntary circuit of possible scenarios again before he could stop it, and the flicker of hope that the brunette waitress Jake was friendly with from the club had somehow miraculously materialised here was only tempered by the fact that the voice he was hearing didn’t actually sound like it was coming from his bedroom after all... or really even as if it was Jake’s.

“Nick,” it sing-songed, and he realised with dawning horror that the source seemed to be much closer. There was a strange rustle of material, accompanied by a sudden impression of movement from the casket in front of him. Oh god! That damn thing had been empty a second before, he was sure of it!

In trepidation, he took a step forward to peer down into the white satin-lined box. Surely this was just his mind playing tricks on him; just the champagne going to his head.

_“Nick.”_

He steeled himself with a deep breath...

“Nick? You are a certified disaster! If you don’t wake up _right now_ , I swear.”

“Huh?” He blinked rapidly and found himself shaking his head and straightening up from where he’d been slouched deep into the seat cushions of a taxi.

“Finally! We’re nearly there, so you better look lively and fish your wallet out. You’re the only one here with money, since you helpfully forgot my purse behind in your drunken stupor.”

“I’m in a cab?”

“Oh Lordy.” Jake gave him a punch on the arm. “For how long were you doing your previous job?”

“Ow! I wasn’t usually seein’ the interior décor from this angle, was I? Uh, here you go.” He handed her his wallet and rubbed his eyes to clear his head a bit. So all that stuff that was happening in the funeral home before was just a stupid dream? _Well, shit._

When he took his hands away from his face, he found Jake was looking at him curiously.

“You ain’t fixin’ to puke are you?” she asked.

“Nope, why? I didn’t drink _that_ much!”

“You look real pale, is all – like you just saw a ghost or something.”

Somewhere in his head the Twilight Zone music started playing, but Nick forced himself to grin and lean in to kiss her. “Hey, all I’m seein’ is you, baby, and our bright and beautiful future as country and western music stars.” He could feel her smiling too as she kissed him back, before they were interrupted by the cabbie hollering for his fare.

Jake paid the man while Nick got out, and he startled a little when he realised where they were. “We’re stayin’ here tonight?”

“Now, for a guy who’s apparently sober, you sure are having an awful hard time keepin’ up with events as they unfold, Martinelli. Yes, we’re staying here because you left my purse with my keys in the club, and the club is now locked up. Since you have an apartment that, frankly inadvisably, only requires climbing through an open window to get into, here we are.”

Nick briefly wondered why his drunken self of however-many-minutes-ago hadn’t just suggested they get a night in a hotel on Ugo’s dime, but ‘here they were’ indeed: there was the window of his room on the second floor, with its white net drapes and the wooden chock keeping it open a crack, and there was the sombre awning over the entrance to the funeral home, jutting out into the street. He shuddered as his mind recalled the weird disembodied voice from the dream. Yep, the ground floor of this place definitely gave him the creeps.

“Earth to Nick!” Jake interjected loudly. “Can you hurry and get the ladder? You’re not the only one shivering, you know!”

“Okay, okay – shhh. Let’s try not to wake up the whole neighbourhood here. It’s—” Nick checked his watch. “…3am.”

“Come on, then.”

“I’m doing it.”

Nick reached up for the ladder and mentally reprimanded himself for being apprehensive that it wouldn’t slide down perfectly normally; he felt ridiculous, but somehow something about that dream was lingering with him uncomfortably in its wake.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Jake exclaimed, and Nick realised his hesitation must have been apparent to her, because the next thing he knew, she had grabbed the ladder hook from where it was kept hanging on the old railings beside the steps up to the funeral home’s entrance, and was bumping him out of the way to reach up and hook it down herself. “If you want a job doing—” Her words were abruptly cut off by the loud grinding and crunching of stuck fast metal. “Well, that’s all we need!”

_Holy shit._

“Is there a knack to this?” Jake asked him. “You try it.” She nudged the pole hook into his hand and Nick automatically re-sited the end of it against the rung of the ladder and gave it another tug. Once more, it produced the godawful grinding sound but no downward extension.

“It’s jammed, all right.”

“Have you got the keys for the main door?” Jake asked.

 _Yep._ He nodded.

“Then at least we aren’t completely screwed.”

“Jake, this is gonna sound weird but—” He paused, wavering on whether to make some kind of remark about how he’d just dreamt that this would happen, or to ask her… to ask her what exactly? For reassurance that this was the first time they’d been here tonight? That really would sound like he’d lost it! “Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just go in.”

Jake smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, sweetheart – if you need protecting from any ghosts and ghoulies, I’ll be right there behind you.”

“Behind me? How about ‘ladies first’?”

“How about you get in my good graces for callin’ me a lady, but you still have to lead the way?”

“Okay, okay,” Nick conceded, and reached into his pocket for the keys.

Once they were inside, he wasted no time in getting through the entry reception, hurrying to the door at the back that led to the corridor into the rest of the funeral home; hopefully, the less time they had to spend in here, the less opportunity for creepy shit to happen there would be. “Jake,” he murmured, “you know where we’re aiming for, right? We gotta go down this corridor and through the chapel.”

It was almost no surprise when the affirmation he was waiting for didn’t come, and he spun around, somehow already knowing that she wouldn’t be there anymore. His blood ran cold when he found out he was right, and he cursed himself – all their joking aside, he shouldn’t have taken the lead when it meant letting her out of his sight.

“Jake?” he called more loudly, not particularly caring if the noise woke anyone upstairs. Last time it had turned out that all this was just a dream, right? So maybe he wasn’t really awake now either, and nothing he was doing actually mattered anyway. Maybe this was like one of those dreams where you woke up in the morning and went through all of your regular routine until suddenly waking up again for real, still tucked in tight under the covers. Maybe this journey through the funeral home wasn’t happening at all.

Emboldened by that thought, Nick moved forward to the end of the corridor and slipped through the door into the chapel. As before, the dim room was seemingly empty, an open coffin sitting on the dais in front of rows of unoccupied pews. For a moment while his eyes adjusted to the low lighting he found himself struggling to even remember where the light controls were in here; were they up with the organ? An unfortunate incident when he’d leant against the switches and plunged the place into pitch darkness halfway through a moving eulogy to somebody’s Great Aunt Giuseppina popped into his memory to confirm that fact.

Belatedly he realised he was still holding the ladder hook, and he wondered if his subconscious had been trying to supply him with a weapon on his way in. Would a pole hook even make the slightest impact against an advancing ghost?

“Nick!”

“Aarrgh!” He couldn’t help the sound that came out of his mouth upon hearing his name called, much less stifle it when it was accompanied by a touch on his elbow.

“It’s me!” Jake squeaked as he whirled around.

“Jesus Christ, you scared the pants off of me! Where did you go?”

“You left me in the reception area, you idiot. I stopped to look at a floral display for a second and when I turned again you’d disappeared like a magician’s assistant.”

“What were you doing stopping to look at a floral display?” he shot back. “Are you planning a funeral all of a sudden?”

“Yeah, yours,” she answered pointedly. “Now let’s just get on and get out of here; this place is giving me the creeping willikers.”

He knew the feeling. They were coming up on the platform with the tiny, flickering electric candle illuminating the open casket, and Nick didn’t want to think of how similar it looked to the one in the dream before, with its white satin interior and heavy dark wood. It was just a coincidence – all coffins looked like that. And hadn’t he already decided this was all still a dream anyway, so it didn’t matter if it _was_ the same damn coffin with its disconcertingly missing occupant. They were going to walk right on past it and over to the stairway that led to the organ room, and everything was going to be fine.

Except that Jake suddenly stiffened behind him and grabbed his arm again. “Nick! What was that?”

“What?” he hissed, stopping short of the casket for fear that she’d seen something in it.

“I heard something coming from over there.”

He squinted his eyes in the unsteady light, trying to follow where she was pointing.

“Behind that door,” she added. “What’s in that room?”

 _Corpses, baby. Corpses are in that room,_ Nick’s mind supplied, but he figured he ought to try and sugarcoat it in the actual telling. “It’s th— the preparation room.” It probably didn’t help that his mouth had abruptly gone so dry that he stuttered half way through saying it, because Jake’s grip on his arm squeezed even tighter after that.

“For the preparation of…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence out loud. “Oh.”

“What did you hear?” Nick forced himself to ask.

“Moaning.”

“That’s not— it’s just this atmosphere gettin’ to you; there can’t really be anything making a noise back there. Come on, we’ll go upstairs and turn on the lights and forget we ever had to get in this way.”

“But what if there _is_ someone moaning? What if this is like one of those true life horror stories where everyone thinks Grandpa Johnson shuffled off the mortal coil, and then he goes an’ wakes up 12 hours later on a mortuary slab with three inches of make-up on? I think you should at least check it out, just in case.”

“Jake, Grandpa Johnson is not behind that door.”

There was an audible bang and a louder moan, immediately followed by a splintering of wood as the door to the preparation room gave way, and they looked at each other in fearful shock.

“Grandpa Johnson is IN FRONT of that door,” Nick gasped.

“And he don’t look so good!”

Jake was right, the old man who was now lurching towards them down the aisle had a very definite _greenish tinge_ to him, and he was holding his arms out ahead of him in a distinctly… zombielike manner.

“Just back away.” Nick took hold of Jake’s arms and pulled her so that he was between her and the slowly advancing corpse, before starting to walk a retreat towards the head of the chapel. He thanked his lucky stars that he had kept hold of the ladder hook, brandishing it threateningly in Grandpa’s direction.

“Uh, Nick? I think we’ve got another problem.”

Jake’s voice was high and urgent, and Nick’s heart sank. What was happening now? 

“You know that coffin on the platform that looked empty before?”

“Before?” he managed.

“Yeah, it’s not so empty now, and whoever is there is so pleased we’re coming towards them that they’re waving their disembodied arms ‘hello’!”

“Are they waving at us, or…”

As if taking his cue to clarify matters, Old Man Johnson suddenly put on a burst of speed, arms reaching longingly down the aisle as he ran straight towards them and the casket _and_ the gnarly tip of Nick’s outstretched pole hook. The zombie gave a muffled grunt as it impaled his undead flesh, before recoiling in surprise and sinking to the floor.

 _Oh shit oh shit oh shit!_ Nick’s brain whirled. _I just accidentally drove a spike through the chest of an undead corpse in my father’s funeral home, and it’s still undead, and I was supposed to be the world’s major new country and western singing sensation and now I’m probably going to end up undead as well, and Jake…_

What had happened to her? “Jake?” He turned just in time to see her being dragged backwards on the coffin dais, scores of spectral arms reaching out from the casket to pull at her hair and shoulders. Nick couldn’t do anything except gape in horror, and the momentary distraction gave the floored zombie enough time to wrench the ladder hook from his rotting body and get to his feet again; the next thing Nick felt was a soft and seeping arm sliding around his own neck, and the sharp sting of Grandpa Johnson’s teeth pulling at his skin.

“Oh god,” he murmured as everything started going grey around him. “Jake!”

“Nick!”

He could still hear her voice.

_“Nick!”_

And the next thoughts he processed were: eyes open, wide awake, taxi, streets of New York – well, how about that!? Nick felt like laughing out loud as he located himself in the backseat of a yellow cab, Jake beside him with her hand shaking his knee.

“Finally,” she exclaimed. “We’re nearly there, so you better look lively and fish your wallet out. You’re the only one here with money, since you helpfully forgot my purse behind in your drunken stupor.”

Of course I did, Nick groaned inwardly, and for some _completely insane and unfathomable reason_ that mistake seemed to have caught him into a bizarre drunken dream loop of guilt that was really screwing with his perception of reality! “I got cash,” he mumbled, attempting to sound normal although his mind was reeling. “Here you go.” He gave her his money and rubbed his eyes before peering through the window to double check that the view outside was what he was expecting to see. There it was: Martinelli’s Funeral Home.

As Jake paid the fare, he jumped out and paced the sidewalk for a moment, trying to think of any way he might be able to tell whether he was still dreaming now. He could get her to pinch him, he supposed, except that she’d already shaken his knee and punched him on the arm as part of the dream without it having any apparent consequences. Maybe if he looked out for things that had been consistent between the two previous loops, that might help him spot if this was one too?

He kicked off by checking his watch, and that certainly made one-for-one. “Oh look, it’s 3am,” he remarked flatly. “Guess we’d better try and be quiet, then. I wonder if this ladder works okay?” He gave it a sharp tug and it made the ungodly screeching noise of jammed metal on metal. Two-for-two! “It doesn’t, in a really loud way. Looks like we’ll have to take the scenic route into the building.” He turned to indicate the front entrance, and found Jake staring at him like he’d gone mad.

“Um… o-kay,” she replied. “Perhaps just go straight for the door next time, if you know that the ladder’s busted ‘in a really loud way’?”

“Next time?” Nick zeroed in on the words. “You said ‘next time’! Is this happening to you as well?” Oh god, half of him was hoping that it wasn’t just him experiencing this crazy sequence, and the other half was absolutely terrified at the prospect, because how the hell would that work? If this wasn’t some kind of wacky guilt-dream punishment trip that his mind was laying on him, then what was it?

“Nick, I…” Her eyebrows were about as raised as they could get, and she seemed to be searching for the right response. “Yes, I’m experiencing this too: we’re here on the sidewalk together; I just watched you fail to pull down a ladder and act like a crazy person – this, lord help me, _is_ my life at the moment.”

“But these events haven’t happened before for you? When you said ‘next time’, you didn’t mean that you expected this all to happen over again?”

“I expect you to act like a crazy person again; that one’s a sure thing,” she answered.

“I’m bein’ serious.” Nick decided to spread his cards on the table. “You’re not getting some kind of freaky déjà vu situation happening here right now, with the ladder and the coffin, and Grandpa Johnson, and the taxi?”

Jake shook her head slowly. “Nick, I’m gonna humour you because I know what kind of strange narcotics can end up flying around at the Rhine Stone when there’s a party on, and I would not put it past someone to have spiked a glass or two of that champagne for fits and shits, but we _really_ need to get inside and you probably should sleep for a good long while. Do you have the keys for the front door?”

At least the fact she didn’t already know that he _did_ cleared up his question. “Yeah, I got the keys,” he told her.

“C’mon, then.”

“Wait a second.” He reached between the railings to retrieve the ladder hook, and noticed at the same time that there was a loose rail near it that was distinctly stake-like in size and shape. Can’t hurt to be prepared, he thought, and grabbed them both up.

The similarity between the beginning of the previous loops and this time was giving Nick a good degree of confidence that he was dreaming now as well, and it made him feel a lot more gung-ho about proceedings as he unlocked the entrance and ushered Jake in. He didn’t seem to wake up in the taxi until some kind of crisis point had played out, and the second loop’s crescendo had been notably more complex than the first, so as far as he figured it at the moment, they could just run through the loop until his brain (or his subconscious, or whatever was in the driving seat on this ride) was satisfied he’d experienced enough horrible shit to absolve him of the purse mistake and set him free of the dream.

There was one question that was throwing a spanner in the works of his thinking, though: would it be a problem if his new-found attitude actually meant he started to _enjoy_ the dream? Nick eyed the ladder hook in his hand and shrugged. Only one way to find out... Slamming the door hard behind them, he took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Grandpa Johnson, I’M HOME!” 

 

\---

 

“Nick?”

“Holy shit!” Waking up in the taxi this time came with a flurry of patting down his own body to gauge its completeness in respect of both blood and limbs, but once he was reassured that everything seemed to be there and intact, he grabbed a dumbfounded Jake and planted a kiss on her lips. 

“What was that for, Romeo? And what’s with the full-body percussion solo?” she asked, breathlessly.

“I can’t kiss my girl once in a while? And maybe I got ants in my pants, baby. Here’s my money, by the way.” He handed her his wallet and craned to see out of the window; they were coming up on the funeral home, and he was raring for another go.

They’d made it past Old Man Johnson and the haunted casket with almost surprising ease once Nick had employed his knowledge from the previous loop, and he was pretty damn sure that meant that this go around would see them defeat _Vampire Elvis Presley_ outright, instead of letting him retreat into his bat form and escape through the bedroom window. If they hadn’t got cornered in the tight quarters of the organ room, Nick was certain that he could have avoided the fiend’s attack and been able to back Jake up when she went in with the stake.

He was out of the taxi practically before the wheels had even come to a halt.

“Nick, will you hold your horses?!” Jake was scrambling out behind him. “What’s got into you?”

“Come on, quick.” He didn’t even bother to try the ladder this time, or check his watch. He knew it was 3am, the metal was stuck, and that his undead Rock n’ Roll idol had to be overcome. Nick had an idea that maybe just making it to their ‘real-world’ intended goal could be the key to breaking the cycle of the loops – it seemed ridiculously simple, but it wasn’t as if his brain was teeming with other possibilities, so getting safely to bed was their target and the king was standing in the way.

“We’re taking the main entrance?” Jake asked in surprise as he made right for the steps.

“Yep, we’re going straight up to that front door, baby, and we ain’t the Girl Scouts selling cookies!” (Nick had to admit, he was beginning to get a taste for these one-liners.) “We’re also—” He wrenched off the loose railing and grabbed up the ladder hook. “—taking these with us.”

“What? What for?”

“Because we’re not going down without a fight.” He tossed the railing-stake in her direction. “You’ll know what to do – trust me, you’re scary with that thing. Now follow me,” he commanded, and any further questions Jake might have had were cut off by the sound of wood splintering as his cowboy boot unceremoniously breached the perimeter of the house of repose.

Inside, they hurried through the reception area and into the corridor, and Nick gave a bewildered Jake the same quick rundown on what awaited them in the chapel that he had in the last loop – it had worked then, with Jake’s confusion giving way to pragmatism the minute she set eyes on the zombie Grandpa. It was true, she was a natural when it came to putting her enemies on their asses, and Nick had come up with the ideal distraction for the hands who wanted a new friend to come and play in their coffin: as soon as Johnson was stunned by a well-aimed stabbing from Jake, Nick scooped up the body and tossed it in the casket, firmly shutting the lid on them all.

Then it was onwards and upwards to the organ room. Last time, their first clue that something was amiss upstairs should have come when they stepped into the small hallway where Nick’s beloved life-size Elvis poster resided, but neither of them had spotted that it was gone leaving only a suspicious alcove visible behind it. Grateful for the respite from the ghost and zombie attacks downstairs they had fallen onto the rumpled bed together without considering whether they were really alone in the bedroom, and despite countering Elvis’s surprise attack with a valiant fight, he had managed to drive them back into the cramped organ room and strike at Nick with bloody teeth bared, before escaping through the window as a bat.

Well they weren’t going to make the same mistakes this time.

On entering the organ room Nick could see that the poster was still missing from the wall and the alcove still empty, and he signalled to Jake to watch out, scanning the ceiling of the room and the stairway in case Elvis was fixing to take a different approach from before. Nick's experiences in the previous loops had indicated that variation in enemy behaviour was possible, even if the basic timings and nature of their actions remained consistent. He reminded himself that this had been broadly true for _them_ as well; they might be able to get the jump on the king by deliberately doing something that wildly contradicted the actions they'd taken last time.

“When we go into the bedroom we should avoid the bed, and close the window down all the way so he can’t fly out,” Nick whispered.

Jake nodded. “You go to the window, and I’ll cover this doorway with the stake. He can’t take both of us at once if we’re on opposite sides of the room.”

The bedroom was still and quiet, but Nick immediately saw evidence that Elvis had been there recently; stray rhinestones lay scattered on the dresser, and an open jar of peanut butter with suspicious red stains around the rim stood amongst them. He moved stealthily over to the window that opened onto the fire escape and removed the chock that held it open. There was a risk that he’d just shut the vampire out instead of in, but he figured that if he had, all they would have to do was wait for dawn to approach and strike when Elvis returned to seek refuge.

If the bat wasn’t outside, there were two other possibilities that Nick could think of: either he was hiding somewhere in the room, or…

Jake suddenly made an urgent muffled noise, and Nick focussed his attention to her, seeing that she was pointing at the closed bathroom door. “In there,” she mouthed, and Nick strained to hear what had tipped her off. Sure enough, there was a faint sound of humming coming from inside. Kind of, ‘Uh huh huh, Uh huh huh.’ It had to be him!

They held a silent conversation across the room, Nick miming that they should move over to the bathroom and then he would kick in the door. Jake nodded vigorously, indicating with a jab of the stake that she would attempt to stab Elvis before he got a chance to attack. At least Nick hoped that was what those movements were supposed to convey, because else she had just inexplicably become _really_ angry with him. It seemed like a decent enough plan, and hell, if it didn’t work there was always next time, right? So he signalled ‘3, 2, 1’ and they both charged towards the bathroom.

The door gave way with a sharp boot from Nick’s heel, and revealed the gruesome sight of yellow-eyed Elvis sitting on the throne with his jumpsuit around his ankles. It made Nick feel a little bit relieved that it was Jake rushing forward to deliver the killing blow, because there was something unexpectedly poignant about the scene, even though the king’s mouth was contorted to bare his fangs in fury. Nick had every record he’d ever released…

The moment was abruptly broken by Jake shouting, “Take that, you undead sonofabitch!” and jamming the stake right through Elvis’s heart. Instantly the vampire was gasping and writhing as his bulk disintegrated into a pile of dust and rhinestones on the bathroom floor. “We got him! Yes!” Jake cried.

“Elvis has left the building, all right,” Nick murmured in awe. So what would happen next? He backed out of the bathroom warily, scanning the space around them in case any other threats had been waiting in the wings for their turn. The place was silent as a grave. “I guess… we can go to bed now?”

“Shouldn’t we try and clean this up a bit?” Jake frowned down at the remnants on the ground. “Or maybe tell someone that the funeral home has gone haywire, or something?”

“It’s—” Nick checked his watch. “—3.30am.” This was the longest time the loop had run so far. “I think we can wait ‘til the morning. Until the sun comes up, at least.” He didn’t want to say that he was hoping they wouldn’t _get_ a morning; he supposed it wouldn’t really make a difference to dream-Jake if he piled one more disturbing piece of information on top of the revelation of ghosts, zombies and vampires she’d already endured in the loop, but since she seemed to be a character entirely unaware of the existence of the ‘real’ world to which he properly belonged, he wasn't sure there was anything to be gained for her in explaining it.

“Okay.” She shrugged. “After everything else that’s happened, I think I can stomach the minor lapse in household hygiene that is Elvis’s incinerated remains on the bathroom tiles for a couple of hours. But I _do not_ want to hear any comments from you about my appearance when I wake up in my make-up because the sink and the mirror were all too covered in dust to use tonight – deal?”

“Deal,” Nick answered quickly. “The panda remarks are off the table.”

“Martinelli,” she warned.

“Sorry, sorry. You know I love how you look, make-up or no, and _I_ know I’m lucky to wake up with you at all.” He was certainly praying that he was going to wake up out of this dream sometime soon and that the real Jake would be there and be as beautiful and brilliant as she always was (even if they were capable of completely infuriating each other on the regular).

“Well, you’re just going to make me blush, cowboy.”

“Let’s lie down, come on.” Nick made his way over to the bed and smoothed out the covers, and Jake joined him in methodically fluffing up the pillows and straightening the blankets. Then they lay down on the top, fully clothed, and rolled to curl together. Sighing, Nick closed his eyes. “Thanks for helping me with… what just happened tonight. And I’m sorry about forgetting your purse behind at the club earlier; I should’ve paid more attention to what I was doin’,” he murmured.

“It’s okay. I was never gonna be mad about somethin’ like that for long,” she whispered back. “Consider yourself forgiven, Nick.”

He smiled.

“Nick?”

He opened his eyes.

“Finally! I need your wallet so I can pay this gentlemen who’s been so kind as to drive us half way around New York at whatever hour of the night it is right now.”

“It’s 3am,” Nick supplied helpfully, scrambling up to a less slouched position on the taxi seat. Was it different this time? What she was saying was different… Did it _feel_ different? “Here you go.” He handed over his cash and wiped his sleeve over the window so that he could see out. They were still approaching the funeral home, but that didn’t mean he _wasn’t_ free of the loop; the real version of events would be destined to play out, whatever happened.

He surreptitiously crossed his fingers as the cab pulled up and Jake paid the fare, and then they were out on the sidewalk. This was it: this was the moment of truth.

“Well, are you going to get the ladder, or will we stand here in the cold all night?” Jake asked, regarding him with obvious amusement.

“Yeah, about that,” Nick muttered. “Let me check somethin’ real quick.” He reached up and gave the ladder a sharp tug. The relief must have been clear in his expression when it slid soundlessly down to the ground, because Jake was staring at him more curiously.

“If all it takes to put that look on your face is a reliable ladder, then I’ve been trying too hard!”

Nick threw back his head and laughed. “I didn’t— I just wasn’t sure if it was working properly at the moment – thought it maybe needed oiling or something. That would have been a ball ache, huh?” 

“Sure would.”

“Come on, let’s get up there and go to bed. But if it turns out that Elvis is already in it waiting for us, I gotta warn you that I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

“What?” Jake was laughing now. “I know he’s very important to you, but unless all those ‘Elvis Lives’ folks are right, I sure am _not_ down for sharing a bed with the guy, Martinelli.”

“Hey, I’d rather share it with just you anyway, Jake Farris. Plus, I happen to have it on excellent authority that Elvis is very, very dead.”

“You say the most romantic things, you know that? ‘I’d rather share a bed with you than a dead corpse, Jake Farris’!”

“Of _Elvis_ though – that’s no ordinary corpse. And he’d be kinda in the right place, wouldn’t he?” Nick jerked his thumb at the funeral home sign. “But seriously, I mean it about only wanting to share with you, ‘cause I only want to be with you, in bed or out of it. Jake—” He paused for a second to look her right in the eye. “I probably should have said this back when we were in Leipers Fork, but… I think I love you, baby.” He grinned and pulled her to him, suddenly flushing with embarrassment. “I said that real terrible! You’re right, I suck at romantic words.”

“Uh-uh, I don’t know what’s got into you tonight, but that came out exactly right,” she whispered, “and I love you, too.”

 

-end-


End file.
